24 May
2016
24 May
'16
9:45 p.m.
The USB-to-1541 interface is really no different than the parport-to-1541
interfaces, other than they use different hardware-level drivers to talk to
the C= 1541.
All of the later CBM floppy drives are (as mentioned) "intelligent
peripherals". They are nothing short of computerized appliances, controlled
via the CBM IEC serial buss. Your average C= 1541 has the equivalent
compute power of a VIC-20.. but dedicated to floppy drive control and
access.
It may, in fact, be possible - with custom ROMs - to use the 1541 for other
formats. But it's telling that no one, so far as I know, has ever managed
to create software to 'tween the various 5-1/4" floppy formats, using the
1541 transport & hardware.
On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 8:43 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com>
wrote:
A fellow has
made up a nice adapter to read and write Commodore disks on
a PC via USB using a 1541 drive.
The thing that jumped out at me is that this is a 5 1/4" drive that
reads and writes via USB. Anyone want to comment on whether the
floppies it accesses would be useful other than on the C64?
Could one do say 360K floppies via this hardware for other than the
Commodore? At least part of the work is done to do more than just
archival like Catweasel, et. al. do, in that it can also write.
The X*1541 cables (this would be an xum1541) still talk to the drives at a
relatively high level, since the 1541/71/81 family are all intelligent
peripherals. So:
For the 1541, which is strictly Commodore GCR, no.
For the 1571, which can do a variety of MFM formats, maybe, but I'm not
aware that OpenCBM supports that. On the other hand, since it's MFM, you
could easily just use something else.
--
------------------------------------ personal:
http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com *
ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Diamonds are forever.
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